My understanding is that some advertisers (but not all) refuse to have their product, service, or organization be associated with any form of content that they personally find objectionable. Networks normally tear their programming apart to suit advertisers while ignoring viewers/subscribers. It's basically their way of saying to advertisers, "we'll take your money, and give you whatever you want," and saying to subscribers, "we'll take your money, and you'll take whatever we give you." It's hard to come up with a system more corrupt than that while continuing to have the majority of the population accept it without complaint. :-(

It's not all the advertisers fault. There's another element here, the lunatic fringe groups. Part of the campaign of groups like the Parents Television Council is to dog advertisers who advertise during certain shows with emails and threats of boycotts. The last one I remember reading about is when CBS showed episodes of Dexter in primetime. In the days of advanced parental control technology on TVs, it is a f**king shame that networks and advertisers still give in to these fartknockers.

I feel differently about OTA than I do about cable/satellite-only channels.

I understand the need to be more restrictive on OTA even when things aren't offensive to me. Consider that I have to make a conscious choice to pay/subscribe to non-OTA channels, so it can reasonably argued that I should make a choice about what to watch when I choose to pay.

OTA, on the other hand, comes to me free if I connect my antenna... so I understand the need to treat those differently.

At the same time... more important than ratings I want to know what shows are about and what to expect. I don't mind violence, but I do not like knives and needles... so to me an R-rating that simply says "violence" is not always helpful. If I watch Kill Bill, for example, I know the knife fights are coming! But not all movies/shows are equally obvious about such things.

So... I'm not for censorship, but I am for better descriptions of content so we can all make more accurate informed decisions about what we choose to watch. And, I understand that my behavior at a public pool has to be more restricted than one I choose to install in my backyard... so I understand why OTA has more restrictions than cable/satellite channels.

HD2Me: When ad-supported, uncensored movie channels are run properly (which we know rarely happens), brief warnings about content are inserted following each commercial break. This is very useful for viewers, but the typical limitlessly greedy channel operators would consider a few seconds of useful on-screen info after each break to be a waste of time. They only value ads, not content, because they are determined to pretend that none of their income comes from paying subscribers. They would say they can sell an extra spot or two for each movie broadcast, and pretend that every aspect of channel operations would completely collapse without those spots, even if there were 30-50% as many ads running a mere week ago (as the case is with UHD).

Maybe they could make that time very affordable by not being so stupid as to be a UNIVERSAL channel that is licensing numerous films from FOX and other studios. After all, the movie ads they're running seem to be for new Universal releases, not films from other studios, so you'd think they'd figure out how to extend the same reasoning to the programming side of things.

Not sure when they started doing this, but it looks like Universal HD's idea of trying to make good on destroying the channel is to preface films with not just one, but two full-screen messages explaining the amount of butchering they have done. This way, from UHD's point of view, the viewer isn't supposed to have any right to complain because they have made it abundantly clear that whatever is about to air is not worth your time or subscription.

Both screens are attached.

These are for a PG-rated version of an R movie (Cold Mountain), cropped from 2.35 to 1.78 of course.

At least now they're showing programs other than the same movie back to back to back to back all day. On Monday they had Hogan's Heroes. It's also scheduled for next Monday. Plus we get Monk, Psych and Burn Notice in HD. That alone makes this channel a keeper.

Not sure when they started doing this, but it looks like Universal HD's idea of trying to make good on destroying the channel is to preface films with not just one, but two full-screen messages explaining the amount of butchering they have done. This way, from UHD's point of view, the viewer isn't supposed to have any right to complain because they have made it abundantly clear that whatever is about to air is not worth your time or subscription.

Both screens are attached.

These are for a PG-rated version of an R movie (Cold Mountain), cropped from 2.35 to 1.78 of course.

That first screen grab looks like it could have been a joke taken out of a Zucker brothers movie...

At least now they're showing programs other than the same movie back to back to back to back all day. On Monday they had Hogan's Heroes. It's also scheduled for next Monday. Plus we get Monk, Psych and Burn Notice in HD. That alone makes this channel a keeper.